Hand Studies
by Tammany Tiger
Summary: Those of us who do any form of life drawing, do hand studies. And hand studies. And more hand studies. This is an experiment in written hand studies. I spent a surprising lot of time looking at the actor's hands, trying to see them through Mycroft's eyes. Considre it somewhere between a writing exercise and a character study.


This is his lover's hand, as unique and recognizable as the timbre of this voice or the silver dapple of his cropped hair. Sherlock would assure everyone who'd listen of the infinitude of detail present in a single human hand. Mycroft, whose details have details upon which other details feed, sometimes thinks he could draw each finger whorl from memory, given a decent graphics program. This is his lover's hand.

It's a solid hand, compared to Mycroft's: workmanlike. Not, however, what people might think of as a peasant's hand, or coarse in line—indeed, Mycroft would compare it to the hands drawn by DaVinci or Rembrandt or Rubens: artists of the Renaissance, whose hands were so expressive, yet so solid and strong. Lestrade's hands have a square palm, with the back almost as square. The fingers lie in an easy fan, nicely in proportion to that sturdy foundation. The thumb is slim, but not spindly. The knuckles are surprisingly small, given Lestrade's begun to cross out of middle-age.

His hand falls into liquid lines, cupping air, tossing it away, cradling ideas and discarding them, letting dreams lie sleeping in the valley of his palm. The turn of his fingers as he holds a cigarette, grinning and shrugging as he shakes another out of the pack for Mycroft, stops Mycroft's heart sometimes. His fingers tap at his mouth as he thinks; grip firm on a phone as he makes a call; wrap around a coffee cup, seeking heat. Mycroft can't look at any of the shifting, fluid forms those hands trace in the air without knowing how those shapes grace love, and grace lovemaking.

Lestrade's hands are smooth, and almost callus-free, but for the tips of his left-hand, where the pressure of guitar strings has raised a light layer of callus carefully maintained. Lestrade can barely sense the difference, unless he sucks a finger lightly into his mouth and traces that thicker skin with a delicate tongue. Otherwise, though, Lestrade's hands are the soft, supple, well-maintained hands of a man whose life is paperwork and words and observations. In comparison Sherlock's are coarse and rough—Sherlock can't resist clutching, grabbing, testing, probing. Lestrade is more wary.

There's a small scar at the base of his left thumb, where a knife slipped in youthful attempts at whittling. Another scar on the middle-right hand, where a bent and damaged Altoid box snagged him as an adult. There are the usual collection of old scars and knicks on his knuckles—perhaps, Mycroft, thinks, more than most, but Mycroft's sense of normality is slightly skewed. One doesn't work MI6 without encountering just enough bruisers of one sort or another to force Mycroft to resort to his computer to determine exact statistical information, and even Mycroft finds that statistic difficult to track.

What Mycroft knows, is that Lestrade's hands seem, to Mycroft, like a perfect microcosmic representation of his lover: strong, solid, sensible—yet, still, graceful and elegant. His fingers are not long, but are beautifully in proportion and elegantly formed.

Mycroft's hands, to his own eye, are inelegant—the form is a bit soft where strength of line would be welcome, a bit knobby where it might better be smooth. His fingers are long, but lack the natural proportions of Lestrade's, that let his lover's hands fall in gestures that beg to be caught by the sepia chalk of an ancient master. Nor are Mycroft's hands, to his own eyes, in proportion to his own frame. They are too long and spidery not to be a tall man's hands, but not long or wide enough to balance his frame, or present a strong dramatic gesture when most he'd like one.

Sherlock was blessed with such hands, he thinks. Vast fans, sweeping through the air, snatching meaning and tossing it up, juggling ideas. Sherlock's hands will age into terrible, knobby beauty, with time. As with all things, Sherlock is graced. His hands already show knuckle and bone, tendon and vein, moving fleetly, gesturing strongly. Mycroft looks at his own hands and sees they are soft, well-kept, perfectly manicured, but pale and formless, as though promising to become fat and pudgy even as he struggles to rein in waist and belly and flank and thigh. Sherlock's hands are ivory. Mycroft, looking at his own, sees similar paleness, but tinged with a baby-soft pink.

Yet he likes his hands when he works—loves the flicker and dance of his hands as he races across the keyboard, traces the touchscreen, navigates the mouse. Then his hands, which seem so inadequate at other times, demonstrate a mastery and a power that secretly delights him. He knows the high arch of his fingers , letting each keystroke come down clean and precise. He loves that even the little finger knows its rightful territory, and masters its own characters and commands. His gold ring shines even when the office is dark, reflecting the glow of the screen, and he doubts less than he might otherwise.

All hands, of course, are elegant in black gloves. His own, Sherlock's, Lestrade's, even John Watson's—such small hands, those last. John's hands are a bit less square than Lestrade's—a bit more delicate, a bit more womanly, for lack of a better term, though there's nothing all that womanly about those hands. They're strong, but lack the sense of bone and sinew and solid muscle that Mycroft feels about Lestrade's, nor do they seem to fall in those natural poses as gracefully. Mycroft doesn't think that's bias, but won't swear it. He's found that memory and affection color his judgment in some things. Where Lestrade's hands remind him of a solid, round hacking pony, steady and graceful and…for lack of any other word Mycroft can find—bonny, John Watson's remind him of a child's thoroughbred jumping pony—strong, but lighter of bone, leaner of muscle, slighter of stature. More nimble over the hedges, but not so sturdy, not such a kindness to the eye.

Of course, Sherlock might argue otherwise, as might Mary Morstan…Watson. Mycroft won't use her true name—or the name by which the records the CIA sent him list her. Mycroft keeps secrets. He knows her hands, too: skilled hands. Deadly hands. Kindly, healing hands, also. She, like her husband, is a contradiction in terms—healer and killer, liar and true friend.

Mycroft waits, unsure what to say of her. He's seen her slim, strong hands with a SIG 228. He's also seen them curl around John Watson's shoulder, though, in comforting grace. And while her damage to his little brother offends him, he's seasoned—as both an agent, and as Sherlock's brother. Mycroft himself has, on occasion, had to choose between Sherlock's death, and the near-death shot that spared his little brother. Figuratively if not literally. He's had to choose again, since Magnussen, opting for a suicide mission over a "merciful" execution by the state. Mycroft won't condemn Mary's clever, clever hands, or their precise aim, until he knows she acted with malice or negligence.

He knows too well how hard it can be to keep little brother alive—little brother and his own clever hands, his own probing mind, his own lack of survival instincts. Mary will live and retain Mycroft's blessing. For now.

Hands. So many hands. Mycroft, with his details, loves them each and all. But always he comes back, knowing his bias, and dreams of square-palmed hands, hands with the easy curve of a leaf in flight, shaping the air as they rise and fall, hands bonny and brave and bold, hands scarred by life and still supple and soft, hands marked by courage, by music, by his lover's own intelligence.

Hands. Mycroft sometimes thinks you could measure the scale and scope his own love by his study of his lover's hands.


End file.
